Monthly Archives: March 2018

by Nelia

I Want Something Sweet!

I just found myself cruising through the kitchen (again) looking for “something.”  And I stopped myself again.  I want something sweet.  I have been here before.  I have failed at about this time before because the craving for sweets defeats me.  Hopefully writing here will give me a little more reason to resist.

Tonight I was watching a commercial for some restaurant.  I became aware, that as each tempting option was shown, I was focussed on the bread.  It looked so good.

It will pass.  I know this craving will pass.  But right now, any time my mind is not fully occupied, it starts nudging me toward the kitchen where the sweet things live.

And then there are the surprise attacks.  Yesterday I opened the back refrigerator for a perfectly legitimate reason and there were the cokes, sweet bubbly cokes.  Dang!  (I need to get those things moved out to the shop where they will not be as attainable.)  You know, when I was on Weight Watchers, I lost weight even though I was indulging myself with Cokes.  They let you eat anything as long as you count up the points.

But this is different.  These days I am trying to break my carb addiction because 1) health 2) weight.  I could have a coke if the goal was only weight.  I could use my calorie allowance however I wanted.  But sugar is bad for me.  Anything that instantly turns into sugar when I digest it is bad for me.  Sugar is even bad for skinny people.  Sugar and all the other delicious empty carbs are threatening my health.

We had roast tonight.  The potatoes and carrots and gravy (thickened with cornstarch) were so good……  They will be going soon… off limits…  high carb vegetables.  This may well be my farewell to potatoes.  Sigh……..   Baked potatoes with butter and cheese and sour cream…….  Yes, I am torturing myself.  Oddly, on a low carb diet I can have the butter, cheese, and sour cream, but not the potatoes.

 

 

 

 

by Nelia

Well that second step thing isn’t working so well

My stated second step was to stop snacking.  I am working on it, but our life isn’t scheduled any more so it is hard to tell whether is is lunch or a snack.  We need to keep regular hours.  Everything I read on the subject says we need regular predictable sleep and it needs to start way before 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning when we usually go to bed.  And you need to have regular eating times, not breakfast if I feel like it, lunch whenever I get hungry, supper when I think about it and when Luke is ready to come in from the shop.

Problem is neither one of have ever been early sleepers, and, though Luke would like for me to make regularly scheduled meals, I am so tired of cooking and planning meals and thinking about what to make that I cannot stand it.  I go crazy when I have to think about what to have for meals and cook all the time.  Seriously, I can’t do it anymore. When I am hungry I can think about what we should have for supper and if I am hungry I am motivated to cook it, but to do it all the time…AAUUGHHHH!!!!

So, the snacking thing is going to have to be a longer project.

What I have been doing is the usual second step, avoiding wheat.  No bread, no bagels, no spaghetti etc.  I had my last pizza, my farewell to bread.  (I read that the Papa John’s Pizza here had closed.  Recently I found out it isn’t closed!  When I learned that, the pizza cravings began.)

I watched a video the other day in which the guy said that when people stop eating sugar, they often start eating more pasta and bread because highly processed wheat does the same thing as sugar once it gets into your body.

Now, I have not completely given up sugar and wheat.  I have given up anything that is “mostly” sugar or wheat.  For example I am on a slaw kick.  The slaw recipe I use has both sugar and wheat.  The recipe is simple, for a head of cabbage, 1/2 – 3/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1 T sugar, 2 T oil, seasoning packet from 1 package of Top Ramen noodles, crushed Top Ramen noodles, 1 cup slivered or sliced almonds.  It is my modification of a recipe that calls for more sugar and more noodles.  I love the stuff and I think 1 T of sugar and 1 package of noodles with a whole head of cabbage is acceptable.  If I go all the way to no sugar and no wheat, of course, the slaw will have to go.  I can like it well enough without the sugar, but without the noodles, it is too blah.

I could use sugar substitutes, of course. I have, but I haven’t this time around.  I would rather do without sugar than use most sugar substitutes because of the taste, the aftertaste, and, for some of them, my body’s reaction.  It seems to me that if my body reacts badly to sugar alcohols, for example, it is trying to tell me something.  I know everyone says they are fine, but are they really?

I see all these recipes for desserts that taste just like the real thing but are low carb because they use artificial sweeteners, and I think, why?  I want to train my my palate to not crave so much sweetness.  Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a “dessert” that is less sweet?  When I do not have sugar for a long time, I become very sensitive to sweetness.  A honeycrisp apple goes from being pleasantly sweet to decadently sweet.  Why not come up with a dessert based on, say, chocolate and cream cheese that has a little sugar in it, but is more like a 70% or 85% cocoa chocolate bar and less like a traditional cheesecake?

by Nelia

Second step

Always, when I have done this, my second step has been to cut wheat.  I have been cutting back on wheat already.  I haven’t had any bread till today when Luke offered me Schlotskies.  I have forgone the bagels I have been enjoying lately.  I haven’t gone full out, but I have been aware.

But I think this time my next step is to stop grazing.  I snack between meals.  I have recently learned that snacking is very bad.  We need to eat and then give our bodies a chance to digest and rest.  3 meals a day…. not 6, not eating little bits all the time.

So step 2 is going to be to stopping the snacks.

Believe me, that is going to be hard.

by Ramona

A normal weekend

We did nothing this weekend. Nothing that had a deadline, anyway; nothing that was scheduled and had to be done.

We worked in the yard. Actually, we made some real progress (dug stuff up) on a particular project that’s been on hold for over a year. And we worked on the roses, which look a whole lot better now, and bought some new plants and even planted two of them.

We also went up into Austin for no reason whatsoever and went to our various favorite haunts and just enjoyed ourselves. It was so nice.

I don’t know how long it’s been since the last time we did this. Many months.

by Nelia

Trying again

Maybe if I make it more public I will do better.

I am trying to change my diet again.  Sometimes I wonder why I try after so many failures, but here I am again.  My main fear, these days, when I try, is the the backlash.  Every time I try, I succeed for a time but, when I inevitably go back to my old ways, I do so with a vengeance and end up gaining back more than I lost.  In recent years this gain back takes less time.  Last time was the worst because I dieted for 2 months and didn’t lose a pound.  I think my body had become very good at adapting.  The backlash caused a gain even though there was no loss.

The plan this time is my sneak-up-on-it strategy.  It is what I have found I can do when I can’t work up the resolve to really do it.  The-sneak-up-on-it plan involves cutting out things I do not need one at a time.  The first cut is always sugar.  By sugar, I mean anything that is primarily sugar or whose flavor is primarily sweet: cokes, cookies, jam, etc.  I have been doing this for a week and it is going well.  I am always confused by how easy this first step it.  Why, I wonder, is it so hard to resist coke and the rest of it if I can give it up this easily?

The next step is always wheat: bread, crackers, bagels, etc.  I feel that one coming on because I find myself pondering alternative flours.  I am looking at one that is a mix of tapioca, almond, coconut, and flax. with no added gluten.  Probably, though, I will just use the flours I have which are Almond, coconut, flax, and maybe buckwheat.

I may have even found a solution to cornbread which is chopping up canned baby corn on the cob.  It has less carbs than cornmeal, I assume because you are eating the cob.  I also learned that there is a corn extract that gives a good corn flavor and that the cornbread texture can be achieved with the addition of crushed pork rinds.  Interesting.  I’m not there yet, but it is interesting.  Actually, though, using almond flour for the wheat flour gives is a somewhat cornbread texture. I always miss cornbread when I go full low carb.

Anyway, I need to lose weight and improve my health so bad.  It isn’t even a matter of how I look anymore.  I may even look worse if I lose weight because I will have excess skin, but that would only be if I lost a lot of weight and right now I just want to lose 50 pounds, maybe 100.  I’m striving for improvement, not ideal weight.

And I keep telling myself that eating better and improving my health is enough even if, like last time, I don’t lose.  Last time, eating extremely low carb enabled me to go off my diabetes medicine and still have a good blood sugar level.  Shouldn’t that be enough?

So I hope to be posting periodically about it here.  I hope writing about it will help me do it.  I hope knowing the people I love know what I am doing and are pulling for me will also help.

 

by Ramona

Class is done. The other project is not.

Well, the class at least ended on schedule.

Though it’s not necessarily over – it’s part of a 3-course cycle, and it’s kind of ambiguous whether I’ll be taking the other two courses (or which courses there will be – this was the general intro, then the material branches into three different tracks). However, that’s months in the future. Their next semester starts in two weeks, and I will be skipping that semester. But perhaps the one in three months time.

I remain unsatisfied and vexed by the whole experience. I tried to talk to the instructor about it today, but I couldn’t articulate what was bothering me. So it came out all wrong.

I am sure that I learned something – I certainly worked hard enough at it, and there were challenges. And if nothing else, I have a huge pile of resources. But now I have to put together a kind of recap presentation to my boss, and possibly a ‘share the knowledge’ kind of presentation to my coworkers, and I’m struggling with how to manage the positive framing that will be necessary.

And we are facing yet another postponement for the ranch. It is frustrating – I am requesting time off for this, and then resetting and resetting and resetting those requests. And of course, that’s just one part of the frustration. The big part is just not having this done with.

But hey! Another weekend that we could go do stuff and the ranch, if we so desired.

by Nelia

Nathan and Buffye visited

My brother, Nathan, and his wife, Buffye, visited this weekend.  They came in Sunday night and left Tuesday morning.

They had taken a timeshare company up on their offer to pay their expenses to tour, choosing a place in Tennessee.  They had no interest in buying, but timeshare places know that.  Nathan was betting he could resist the urge to buy and they were betting they could convince him to buy if he would come take the tour.  So Nathan and Buffye had a nice sightseeing trip there, then they explored the interesting places in Tennessee and drove to Pat’s for a few days, stopping in here on their way home.  They apologised for the short notice, saying they could not decide between Brad and me for the return stop, finally deciding on me the day before coming.

They left Pat’s at 5 in the morning, expecting to get here around 5 in the evening, but they ran into heavy traffic and several stops and slow-downs due to accidents so they didn’t get here till after 9.  That was one long day and they were tired so we didn’t visit much before going to bed.

We have a king size air mattress which we thought about setting up for them but clearing a space was more trouble than it was worth for a 2 night visit, so Luke gave up our bed and used those 2 futon mats stacked on the floor while I slept in the recliner.  He was comfortable enough that we will probably do it that way for future short visits, but he felt soooo good when he was able to sleep in the bed again.

We had a good visit.  Nathan hung around with Luke most of the time while Buffye and I visited in the house.  The guys hung chains for my hummingbird feeders in the back and Nathan helped Luke get the barrels out of the shed so they could be opened up and gone through.  I think there were 3 full sized barrels and 2 short ones.  Luke and I could not remember what was in them, but we thought they were full.  He has been dreading moving full barrels because of the weight, but, as it turned out, weight was not a problem.

He cleared a way to get them into the storage area of the shop, only to find that there was little that needs storing.  One had flower pots in it, put there for the move.  One had a little fabric, and one small one had memories in it.  The other 2 were empty.

The one with memories was the most interesting.  I found Luke’s letters to me from when we were dating.  I thought they had been burned when my dad got tired of all the kids storing their stuff at his house, and went on a burning rampage.  For so many years I thought they were gone but there they were.  I haven’t read any of them.  I may never read them, but it is nice to know they still exist.  Other than that, there was a huge pile of newspapers which I have not looked at and odds and ends from my youth and from when Ramona and Chris were little.  It will be interesting to go through everything, even though what was kept looks pretty random.

After they left I pondered something and finally figured it out.  I think it is interesting so I will share.

There are 2 styles of listening.  I will call them responsive listening and attentive listening.  My listening style is “responsive,” as is most of the people I know.  Responsive listening is listening with plenty of feedback both ways.  What one says, the other responds to, maybe with a short “hm,” maybe with a question, maybe with a story of something that they are reminded of, but there are plenty of words going in both directions.  Attentive listening is when one person is doing all the talking and the other is just listening, looking attentive and interested, but saying nothing or almost nothing in reply.

Buffye is an attentive listener.  Attentive listeners make me nervous.  I find myself talking too much, compelled to fill the silence.  I pause to give her opportunity to respond, and then nervously yammer on with anything I can think of when she continues to be silent.  Meanwhile, Buffye is waiting for me to stop long enough that she knows I am finished.

Now that I have figured that out, she and I will have better conversations because I will fight through my urge to fill the uncomfortable silence by continuing to talk even though I have said all I have to say.

Luke tends to be an attentive listener while I am a responsive listener.  He finds me rude because I constantly interrupt while I find him unresponsive because he is silent, so it is not like I don’t have experience with this problem.  But I didn’t recognise it in Buffye and myself till after this visit.  I  guess I didn’t recognise it before earlier because she does carry on a normal comfortable conversation until I tell a story or relate something that requires more than a couple of sentences.  Then she goes into listening mode.  I wonder if she is that way naturally or if it is something she learned.

Not that that small glitch in our communication took anything away from the enjoyment of the visit.  It was very good to see them.  I wish they had been here long enough to get all of us together.

by Ramona

Weekend Update

We did plenty of stuff this weekend. It was a busy and productive set of days. And I have yet to do any coding on my project.

Let’s see …

We got Joseph’s glasses ordered. We got his exam & new prescription back in December, and we have been saying how this is our top and first priority ‘just as soon as the ranch stuff is done’. So it’s been a long time he’s been waiting for decent glasses, and it’s nice to finally have taken this next step. They should be in end of next week or early the week after that.

We took Eleanor to the doctor and went to the pharmacy and sat up fretting over our feverish child. She is absolutely fine now. It’s a little strange to think we have to give her antibiotics for the next nine days when she’s so evidently recovered. Was it just last night that I was up at 2am giving her Motrin for a spiking fever and wondering if I needed to bring in the ice packs?

We took Eleanor to the jumpy place and let her run around for at least an hour and a half, in those last fading hours before we considered that she might be sick instead of merely alternating sweet and cranky, probably tired, and picky about food. Because those preliminary symptoms could also have been any day of the last year and a half. To all the other parents taking their kids to the jumpy place for a final romp at the end of spring break: We are so sorry. We really didn’t have any idea she could be sick.

We spent the frivolous part of our tax refund (we split them, as one does, and do the sober responsible thing with the first portion and some agreed upon frivolity with the rest. It’s not always half and half.) We went to Wimberly Glass Works and special ordered a beautiful dust catcher. It’s been three years that we’ve been eying this particular pattern and this was the year. It will likewise be a couple of weeks before this one is ready. I am really, really, really looking forward to it.

We mowed the yard. This was complicated by the fact that the mower was buried under several layers of ‘just stuff it in the garage; we’ll sort it all out later’ deposits. So we excavated the mower, and then moved the yard. This was the first mow of the season, delayed (like everything else has been delayed) till ‘just as soon as the ranch stuff is done’. (a certain personality type would have made an acronym of that phrase by now)

We picked up. I shudder to think of how long it has been. We still haven’t had a day to really dig in and clean. But you know – just as soon as the ranch stuff is done.

Joseph went to a nursery and priced out the frames we’ll need for our growing, and possibly (given a critical eye) scraggly roses. There is so, so much that needs to be done in the lawn just as soon as the ranch stuff is done (don’t you wish I was the type of personality that made up acronyms?). Our roses never got trimmed this winter, so they all have a certain wild-grown look to them. AKA ‘scraggly’.

You see how much of this weekend was devoted to me finishing up this school work?

Well, I did get all of the regular homework done. And I finally keyed in on how to approach the project in the first place. You know how you can try all you’d like but when it’s just the wrong goal so you’ll never seriously get started? Yeah; I was there till late Saturday. But now that the goal finally clicked, I got the scaffolding all set up and have most of the concept detailed out. I just haven’t done a lick of coding. I have examples to follow. It will just fall into place, right?

It’s not like last time where I could keep working on it for a week and a half after the due date. The course ends for good on Wednesday.

by Ramona

We are all sick

Only some of us don’t know it yet.

Eleanor has strep throat.

Which means we all do; we just don’t know it. Incubation is 3-5 days. Joseph may be going down with it now. I give myself till about Tuesday to crash.

Still haven’t even started the project. But I’ve settled decisively on the book theme.

Sat around last night and played the clicker game.

I get it, in part. The rewards are timed such that, at least at first, the next one is just within reach. And there are several other game elements that make you want to stay. We played for 5 hours (well … the window was open). I was surprised. But I can see a little more what is engaging about the game. Though I still think it’s pointless.

And thank goodness for other students sharing their work. I’m lifting so much from their code I ought to feel guilty. But I don’t.

Insufficient guilt complex: early stage symptom of strep throat.

by Ramona

No progress

Well.

The ranch sale was supposed to be yesterday. (supposed to. That’s a hint) Lots of ‘oh wow this is the end’ feelings to process last weekend.

And then the title company, of all people, went out of their collective minds and it’s been a solid week of mind melting craziness, except that we stepped out of the game way early and handed it all over to the lawyer. Thank goodness for probate and the way it forces you to get a nice lawyer relationship going. And this is the guy who handled our wills, too. We like him. He’s great. He has a nice dog. And whatever he’s going to charge us for this last week is worth it.

The new closing date is next Thursday. We might go out to the ranch this weekend just because.

And I’m not really believing this “Thursday” date till it’s done.

So that leaves the class project. This is the last major project. I don’t really know the programming language. I certainly don’t understand the project. We have to write our own version of this incredibly inane game. I had to look it up on Wikipedia just to understand what was going on – which is nothing. But I couldn’t quite believe that it was this much ‘nothing’ going on, especially as the class assignment characterized this as a ‘popular’ and ‘super engaging’ game. But sure enough, Wikipedia explained the nothingness of it, and confirmed that it was popular and considered to be engaging.

I swear, there are times when I feel like a cultural anthropologist, trying to understand this bizarrely inexplicable culture.

There are lots of variations on this game. We are encouraged to make up our own variation. The basic mechanic is: you click on a thing. This gives you points. When you accrue enough points, you can turn points in for things that will give you points. The things will then require more points, so you have to continue getting points so you can turn them in for increasingly expensive things that will get you more points.

That’s it.

I still don’t quite believe that this could ever be ‘engaging’, but wikipedia has convinced me on the ‘popular’ count. But it can’t have been popular by being engaging. There must just be a lot of closet nihilists out there.

So this is the project I have to do this weekend. Wrap my head around the concept. And then program it.

I’m playing with the idea of clicking on a book to fill your bookshelf, and then getting to buy library cards or something to let you get more books. Because as endless loops go, this is one I understand.

I’m also considering a worm ouroboros thing, where you click on a section of a snake (that progresses, perhaps, but never ends) and there’s some countdown to ragnorok and you have to keep getting hammers and eventually maybe get to turn them into mjolnir. But you see, that would have an ending and have a point, so I guess that’s out.

And I’ve been toying with making something that seems just about as pointless as I can make it. Like … I don’t know. What could possibly be more pointless than clicking on a cookie? One classmate shared his nearly completed project. You click on a gold coin and can use the points to get diggers, miners, and excavators. So .. theme. But still pretty dang pointless. So .. you click on a dirty dish or a mound of laundry and there’s a counter that says “clean house” that is always set 25 points higher than where you currently are? You click on a cat and the clicker reads “cats herded”?

Click on one of the goth kids from Southpark and there’s a counter that says “Things that are pointless” and you can add the other goth kids as add-ons and the ‘things that are pointless’ counter goes higher the more goth kids you get in the club? (this kind of amuses me. maybe I will do this. ha!)

I have not started this project at all.

So. This weekend was supposed to mark the end of the ranch project and see the end of the class project. Neither is looking really likely right now.

And Eleanor is sick.

sigh